My Freelancing Mistakes #01 - Greed

I am going to openly admit my stupidity and talk about my mistakes during freelancing here. Hopefully this could grow into series of posts that could be useful to all freelancers and whatnot out there. I am sure there will be a lot of posts under this series, because I make many mistakes all the time :)

Mandatory introduction: my name is Hafiz Rahman and I freelance at Rent A Coder, or RAC henceforth. What I write here is my freelancing experience using RAC's system, but I believe my story can be applied on general freelancing area. I am not affiliated with RAC and I write this article purely on my own interest, so there.

The first mistake I want to admit is that I was greedy. If you're too lazy to read down and just want to jump into conclusion, read this loud and clear: Greed kills.

When I started (few weeks ago), I was very excited with everything. I browse through all the available projects, and without thinking too far I immediately placed bid on stuff I'm not even 100% sure I can do. I just want instant success. I just want better rating. I just want more fame.

See, my greed is not necessarily on money. I was willing to be paid small to do jobs with really quick deadline. My thought was the project is pretty simple and I can deliver finished job perfectly before deadline. My aim was not the money, but the status I can get from completing the job, the rating I could get from the client (Buyer, as per RAC's jargon).

What I failed to realize are twofold. First is this pure fact that I had to learn the hard way: There is no simple project. Period. Even if it says so on the project's description. Even if it's only creating a CSS skeleton for a page. Even if you just have to make a simple logo.

The second mistake: I didn't put into account revision tasks. Even though finishing initial task can be done quickly, revision could consume double, thrice, or even more time than that. This is deadly, especially when I have to juggle my time doing other projects too. The time used to revise a work is the time I don't use to do more productive things (like other projects).

Eventually, my greed led me into a situation where I had to handle multiple jobs, one deadline coming after another, multiplying my stress. Plus, there might be the occasion where one project consumed time far too long than it is supposed to. This very terrible.

I have made the conclusion that I had better took less project(s) and deliver better quality, rather than more projects and less quality. I don't give a damn about coder rank anymore (I am currently number 140,000-ish). Somewhere in RAC's articles for coders, I read that you do not need to be in the top ten list to make serious money.

And that is true. Plus, I don't think I want to be a sick, depressed, tired top ten coder after all.

Comments & Discussion

I agree that greed is a bad advisor, but I don't agree so much that the small projects are bad.The small projects are good way to collect more feedback and experience, especially if you are a beginner :)